Sleeved by Dr. Garcia at florence hospital - my story

[Olivia23 68]

First of all I want to apologize for this being so long but I wanted to put down all my details. Also I am sure I jumped around in my story a bit but it's late and I'm tired lol!

I flew down to San Diego airport on June 17th and Samuel was there a few minutes later to pick me up. He drove me to the Marriott hotel and we waited in a long line to check in. While waiting I met another girl checking out who had been sleeved and she looked fine! That helped to ease my nerves a little. When it was our turn the driver Samuel spoke to the hotel people for a while. I could tell something was wrong but could not understand what they were saying. Samuel finally told me that there was a mistake with my arrival date. They had me staying at the hotel the day after my surgery and not that day! No problems though. Samuel spoke to them a few more minutes and they found me a room on the tenth floor. The hotel was very nice and I slept great on their bed.

Samuel told me that I would get a call from Ana that evening to tell me when I would leave in the morning for surgery. He said he would not be taking me that the hotel would. Ana did call and she told me the hotel people would call me in the morning about 10am to let me know when they were ready to drive me to the hospital. Well at 9:50 the next morning I decided to call them. They seemed puzzled by it but said ok. I went and checked out, and one of the staff took my bags and we started to walk out the doors when the doorman stopped him. I couldn't understand what they were saying but he pointed for me to sit down in one of the seats and he sat my suitcase next to me. The doorman came over and pointed at some paper and asked was I in room 1004. I told him yes and he walked back to his spot. I waited until 10:15 watching them go about their regular task then I asked the doorman was anybody taking me to Florence Hospital. He walked off and spoke to someone behind the desk and came back over to me, took my suitcase and said okay, so he drove me to the hospital. He did walk in with me a found Ana for me so I tipped him.

Ana sat down with me and explained what all the paperwork was about. She is very sweet. After that she walked me to my room, number 13 thank you lol! She told me that my surgery would be around 3pm that day and went on and explained the rest of the things that would be going on. Oh, also they do have tv now with english channels! I had to hand over my drivers license for them to keep so I can have the remote. When you leave, you return the remote to get your license back - weird. Anyway not long after Ana left they brought me a gown to put on and told me to take everything off but my underwear. While I was in my bathroom changing I noticed on the light switch dried red flakes on it. I took some toilet paper and wet it with soap and washed it off. It could have been dried blood so that worried me about the cleanliness of the place. I also noticed above the closet in my room there was one ceiling tile in the back corner that had black mold growing on it. Another worrisome thing. After changing a guy named Hector came with a wheelchair to take me to draw blood etc. When I came back I was visited by different doctors one being Dr. Garcia explaining everything to me. Dr. Garcia is very soft spoken. I liked him. After that the nurse came in to start my iv with no problems.Then about 3:15 I was told to climb on a bed that it was time for my surgery. Boy I was so nervous!

Two nurses wheeled my bed to the surgery room then told me to scoot over to the operating bed. When I did one of the nurses asked did I still have my underwear on. I said yes so I had to take them off right there lol! They also noticed I still had my wedding band on and told me to take it off. I gave it to the nurse. They proceeded to strap my arms down while I was talking with Dr. Luna. That was the first time I had met him, and he had a mask on so I couldn't see what he looked like but he did know that I was on this forum talking about my experiences! Then I remember staring at the overhead lights wondering when I would start to feel sleepy and that's all I remember lol!

When the surgery was over they tried to wake me up but I didn't want to. They kept telling me I needed to get on the other bed. I didn't think it was possible but somehow I did it. Then when they brought me to my room I had to wake up again and I somehow managed to scoot over on the bed. When I finally woke up I was in so much pain and the room was so hot!!! I even asked them did they have the heat on! They opened a window and the room cooled off quickly. I went back to sleep and woke up sometime later and I was instantly regretting my surgery. I had stomach pain, back pain, and severe nausea. I threw up blood several times that day. The nurses were injecting nausea and pain meds into my iv but they did not seem to help any. I knew I needed to get up and walk but I just couldn't. I felt horrible. When I would get up to go to the bathroom I would walk a few times in my room then the pain would be so bad that I had to go lay back down. I do believe that was gas pain. I could not burp or anything!

The next day was a little better. They took me off the pain medicine I was on and gave me another kind. That helped a lot with my nausea. I walked around my room a little bit more and then I went for my leak test. By the way I was not thirsty at all since I was hooked up to iv I felt hydrated enough. I dreaded the leak test though from what people had said it was nasty and I was so afraid of throwing it up! Well it was nasty but I drank it in one swallow. I don't think they expected me to drink it so fast because they did not get a good xray of it. I was worried they were going to make me drink it again, but instead they put some Water in the cup and had me drink that. I have the xray now and I guess everything was good. I forgot to ask.

Later that day I was brought about three small cups and one large cup. The large cup had ice chips, the other looked like apple juice, gatorade, and water. I couldn't stomach any of them. I could only eat the ice chips and not many of those before my stomach started gurgling and hurting again so I stopped. The next day was a little bit better. I believe it was this day they told me to take a shower so they could change my bandages. I was afraid that it would hurt getting the bandages changed but there were no problems. I forgot to mention that they did have to switch my iv to the other arm because when the nurse was injecting medicine into it my arm it started hurting. She felt my arm and said it was cold, so that meant she had to switch the iv to my other arm. Unfortunately she could not find a vein so she had to put the iv on the inside of my arm near my elbow. I asked could they just leave the iv out and she said no. They also did a blue dye leak test before the juice and ice. I asked did I have to drink all of it and they said no, only a little bit. I never saw any dye come out in my drain and I never did have weird color pee. I was worried that maybe I didn't drink enough of the dye.

I was visited again by Dr. Garcia and he noticed that I had not touched my juice. He said it was okay since I had the iv in, but I needed to be careful after that about getting dehydrated. He even told me that drinking juice with regular sugar was okay because I needed energy. Later that day they brought me a large cup of apple juice that was delicious! It tasted fresh squeezed. The other juices I didn't like because I thought they smelled funny. I have a thing about smells. I could only drink a little bit of the apple juice though thenit was time to go. Ana brought me some goody bags and paperwork about my diet which another doctor had already explained to me. Ana also had I believe his name was Edwardo(sp?) with her. She said she was training him to take over her spot so I don't know what is going on with her if she is leaving or just moving on to another position. Ana also told me that Dr. Luna would be by my hotel that afternoon to remove my staples.

The hotel van picked me up and took me back to the hotel. I checked in again and they took my debit card again in case of anything happening to their room. They said something about me staying two days and I told them no, I was only staying one day. This time I was on the fifth floor.. The afternoon came and went with no call from Dr. Luna so I emailed him, Ana and Irene asking when was he coming by because I was 6:30pm. When I finally got a phone call it was Samuel telling me that he would come by at 8am the next morning to take me to the airport. I told him what was going on with my staples and that I was really worried I wouldn't get them taken out and that I was afraid I would have to go home and pay a doctor to do it. Samuel said he would call Dr. Luna for me and that he would email me when he got a response. I finally got an email from Ana saying she would let Dr. Luna know but that he was still in surgery because they had run behind. She said it would be about 9pm before Dr. Luna would be there. Btw Irene was out of the country so I was not able to speak to her.

Dr. Luna called me not long after that. He said he would be by in about 40 minutes. I believe he came around 7:30 or so. He was super nice and he said something about they didn't tell him to come by (I was leaving a day earlier than most people). I was so worried about pain from the staples being taken out but Dr. Luna said not to worry that it would not hurt. I didn't feel a thing! He changed my bandages and put steri strips on all my wounds except for the one with the drain. He told me I did not need to have bandages on them. Just the drain and told me when I took a shower to just put waterproof bandages on. When he left he gave me a hug! He is so sweet and cute! After that I decided to order some broth to see if I could eat it because I was having a hard time drinking water or gatorade. Well the broth was delicious and it went down easier than the water. I could only eat a few bites though before the gurgling full feeling started again. I finally got ready for bed and slept pretty good. BTW I could only sleep good by laying on my right side. I could not lay flat on my back. It hurt too much.

The next morning I checked out and the hotel gave me a receipt showing that my bill was zero. Samuel showed up right on time but this time I had several ladies riding back with me. They had the surgery also. The boarder was no issue because we all had our passports. We had to hand them over to the driver, and he handed them to the boarder guard. The guard asked us what we were doing there and we told him it was for medical purposes. Then he asked if we had anything to claim. We told him medication, and another girl said beer and cigarettes lol! They let us through with no inspection. We got through it so fast that Samuel took us sightseeing. I really appreciated that and tipped him well when he dropped us off at the airport. I was there about 9:30 and my flight was at 1:45 so I had plenty of time to walk around. i was so worried about getting blood clots on the flight. I had two flights. The first one was about 5 hours and the second one was a little over an hour. I had planned on wearing the compression stockings they gave me but when I put them on the kept bunching up around my knee and it hurt so I was more afraid to keep them on in case they cut off my circulation. I made sure to stretch my legs several times during the flight.

When the last flight landed I was so happy until they told us that the thing that was supposed to connect to the plane to let us out was broken.Then they said that they would have to drive some stairs to the plane to get us out, but then those stairs broke down!!! I ended up waiting to get off the plane for 40 minutes!!! They had to back the plane up a few feet so they could drive some more steps over. When they finally did, we all had to walk down a flight of steps to the outside. I was worried about carrying my suitcase because we are not supposed to lift anything over 10lbs. but I packed light so I was okay.

My stay started at the Mariott hotel on June 17th, I had my surgery on the 18th and left on the 21st. I am doing very well now. Hardly any issues with drinking water. I am on full liquids now so trying to find a variety of Soups to buy. One thing that has me worried right now is I have on my debit card statement that the Marriott hotel charged me 78.05! I don't know why I have that odd charge on there because when I left they said they took the hold off my card and my balance was zero. Don't know what to do about that right now but all in all my experience was a good one and I am glad I had the surgery there.

[Melixxa 125]

I'm so glad that you're feeling well. Thanks for sharing with us, and I'm sending best wishes for a fantastic recovery!

I don't like the sound of all the confusion you dealt with--or in the case of your card, still dealing with!

Keep us posted!

[ReadyNewM3 112]

Very happy for you! Thanks for sharing

[joannao74 112]

So glad all went well..you could email the Marriot..and in the folder is their phone number..